


A Long Way From Budapest

by AlphaFlyer



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Infinity Stone Soul World (Marvel), Platonic Soulmates, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Soul Stone (Marvel), Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 04:37:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19243981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlphaFlyer/pseuds/AlphaFlyer
Summary: Natasha remembers letting go.  She remembers falling, endlessly, the jagged black rocks rising to meet her.   And then, nothing – until the moment her eyes and her mind opened to the golden glow.





	A Long Way From Budapest

**Author's Note:**

> I knew the minute I walked out of the theatre at 3 am on a Wednesday morning in April that I had to write a fix-it. Not because I resented Natasha’s death; it was earned and a fitting end for her journey, leaving her ledger wiped clean. But... Conveniently, some of the movies’ deeper plot holes center around the Soul Stone, and I feel perfectly entitled to drive my own personal narrative truck through all of them. I’ve stayed away from all other fix-its until I got this written, so maybe this has already turned into a trope - like my Clint-and-Natasha-get-into-that-car fic had when I posted it, 6 months late, in 2012 – but I guess I’ll find out. 
> 
> Thanks to my friend Inkvoices for lending me her time, her eyes and her critical brain for storming; you made this a far better story. Thanks are also due to JR ”EagleEye” Barton, who pointed her finger at one particular weak spot. You guys are The. Best.

Suddenly, the world is bathed in gold.

Natasha remembers letting go.  She remembers falling, endlessly, the jagged black rocks rising to meet her.   And then, nothing – until the moment her eyes and her mind opened to the golden glow.

She makes an effort to get her bearings, starting with her own… body? Is that what it is?  She can see the outline of her own self and it’s hers, but also different.

She is a small girl of six, before the Red Room found her.  She is ten, battered and bruised but gathering strength. She is sixteen, muscles and sinews taut in expectation of her first kill.  She is fully-grown and in control of her life. She is tired from loss, but still sharp with purpose. She is all of these things and none.  Her form shifts with her thoughts, but it is always whole, unbroken; always _her_.

Her: Natalia Alianovna Romanoff.  Or should it be Natalia Ivanovna, after a father she has never known?  Maybe Ivan Petrovich Bezukhov was her father, like Thanos was Nebula’s?  Perhaps to that Wraith on the Planet for the Dead, fatherhood is a relative concept.  He had also called her ‘Liebchen’. None of it sounds right.

She is who she is, who she chooses to be: _Natalia. Natasha. Tasha. Nat._

The world around her is impossibly peaceful, an endless expanse of mirror-like waters.  A few open structures, similar to the one she is in, float above the liquid surface, shaped like Shinto shrines or the torii that guide travellers inside.   _Miyajima?_ she wonders briefly, but the symbols carved in the ceiling above her are not Japanese, nor are they of Earth.

She wonders whose story they tell.

Each shrine seems to harbour a person, silhouetted against the sky or the waters, lost in thought or in themselves.  They look human at first glance, but subtle differences in their outlines suggest they come from worlds far from her own - and each other’s.

Natasha scans the horizon, but there seems to be none.  The world starts and ends with the golden sky; it seems finite, but she can’t tell whether she is on a planet-like sphere, or inside an oversized amber snow globe.

And then it strikes her: _the Soul Stone_.  She is inside the stone.

Pretending she is Wanda, Natasha tries to stretch her thoughts as far as they will go up into the golden light.  What she feels there, at the end of the world that contains her, is love. Love, tinged with an infinite sense of sadness and loss, and a touch of cold rage.

_Clint?_

She doesn’t know how she knows, but she knows: Clint is holding the Stone.  She wonders briefly if he’d agree, should they win, that coming to Vormir was worth it.  Being Clint, he’d argue the point until the end of days, given the chance. She feels what is like a smile of satisfaction, as she remembers squabbling, fighting over the right to die.

How many times had they been prepared to exchange lives before, one for the other, throughout their time together?  Yelled at each other for taking that bullet, that fall, that hit? But never like this.

She had done what needed to be done, one last time, and won.

_Whatever it takes._

Her ledger is clean.  She can rest.

 

****

 

Clint’s joy of reuniting with his family is followed by several weeks of hard work.  After five years of neglect and the occasional squatter - animal; nothing is missing but there are droppings all over the ground floor - the house is a shambles, inside and out.   Laura’s vegetable garden is almost completely overgrown and a branch of the big tree has come down on the back porch during some prairie storm or other. Without anyone turning on the heat, the pipes had burst during a particularly harsh winter; the house is dry now, but there’s a moldy smell in the rugs and old water streaks mar most of the walls where the pipes run behind them.  

Good time to paint and instal the hardwood floors Laura had been pining for, but that’s several weeks’ of hard work.  Most of Iowa – the Midwest, the planet - is doing similar things, and there is no paid help to be had.

Clint apparently hadn’t bothered to clean out the fridge when he’d left.  Laura had taken one look, gagged, and told him to drive into town to buy a new one before everyone else got the same idea.  On the positive side, apparently no one had bothered to cancel his SHIELD pension in the last five years, and he hadn’t touched it because he’d been living off…  No matter. At least money is not an object.

“And a new vacuum!” she’d hollered after him as he pulled out of the driveway.

At least nobody had come by to loot their place while everyone was gone and most of their things are still there.  The laundry machine and dryer run non-stop for five days, with the line out back holding a dozen sheets at a time.

The work is interrupted on occasion by Clint just staring at everyone, picking up Nate, or hugging one of them at random.  Of course, for the kids Clint’s sudden clinginess is all a bit weird. For them no time has passed since their aborted picnic. In fact, Nate’s first request had been for that hot dog he’d never gotten to eat.

For a while, it’s all good. The camping gear is still there, so they live in tents during the renos.  The kids love it and even when the house is habitable again Nate refuses to move back inside for weeks.

Clint gets to vent five years of accumulated fury by hammering hundreds of nails into the new flooring, Laura holds him through the nightmares, and they both tell Cooper that _under no circumstances are you getting that kind of tattoo, young man._

Bit by bit, everyone adjusts to a new reality that is not quite like the old one, but it’s fine. They are fine.

It’s after those first few weeks of family time and readjustment have passed, when he manages to put the hammer down in time to sit on the porch in the evening light, that Clint remembers holding the Stone.  How it had felt like he’d been holding _her_ in his hands, warm, pulsing with life, telling him it was okay.

And he starts talking about how he should never have let her go.

 

*****

 

The nearest shrine isn’t far away, if distance is a concept here.  Natasha’s feet leave no ripples, nor does she sink, as she steps across the water to meet the creature within.

 _Hello_ seems inadequate – especially without a Universal Translator - but the strange shape turns towards her nonetheless.  A greeting is a greeting and apparently words are unnecessary here.

 _Hello_ , she hears - feels? - in return.   _Be welcome. Be whole._

The formal turn of phrase seems oddly fitting.  Natasha smiles in appreciation and earns a nod in response.  The question that follows, however, is different.

_Were you loved, or did you love?_

She doesn’t have to think about the answer.

_Both._

She answers quickly, without question; it is not one she has needed to consider or side-step for a very long time.  Everything the Red Room had sought to drive out, she had found - first with Clint, then with his family. And Steve, Wanda, Bruce, Maria, even Tony and Nick…   But Clint, first and always. _Clint._

 _Yes.  Definitely both._  

Of course, here in this place, love comes with a whole different meaning.  Here, love means death. An explanation is warranted.

_He wouldn’t let me go even though he should have known it had to be me.  Because the sacrifice wasn’t about him, or me, or us; it was about everyone - and I had debts to pay._

The alien  – a woman, Natasha knows beyond certainty, despite the absence of anthropomorphic visuals – nods slowly, as if she’d heard every word. It’s obvious now that thoughts aren’t silent here.

Natasha feels her smile.

_In this realm, thought and action are one and the same._

The alien pauses before continuing.

_There are a few like you here.  Souls who took that final step for love._

There would be, Natasha realizes.  Giving one’s life for the sake of others is not a unique phenomenon.  But….

_And the others?_

The woman sighs.

 _Most of us may have been loved at one time, but were discarded in the end._  

She exhales on a sigh; a cloud of regret fills the air.

  _You have to wonder how can that be true love, and true payment for the power of the Stone?  There is a difference between a price and a prize, but the Stone does not seem to know or care. It is a thing, I believe, capable of great power, but also of great deception.  Or else its Guardians are._

Natasha considers what she has heard.  That pattern is not exactly new; even the Bible speaks of Abraham’s sacrifice, when really it was Isaac’s – who had absolutely no choice in the matter.

 _How did you come here?_ she asks the woman.

Again, that sigh.

_I was chosen; I did not choose. My father sought to save our people from a great flood. He meant well - for all but me. I can only hope the Stone gave him what he wanted so I will not have come to this place in vain._

There are many questions Natasha wants to ask, but one rises to the surface with greater urgency than the others.

_How long have you been here?_

Something like a rueful chuckle escapes the other.

_Yesterday?  An eon ago? Time has no meaning here.  Eventually, eternal peace will find you._

The alien turns her thoughts away, back to quiet contemplation; the conversation seems to have exhausted her and is clearly at an end.  The anger that wells up inside Natasha at her final words is at odds with the Zen-like surroundings, but it passes when she reflects on her own choice.

Clint had not chosen Natasha to be the sacrifice; he had fought to be the price himself.  There is as much comfort in that knowledge as there is in the righteousness of her choice.  She can live with that - or whatever it is they are doing here, those inside the Stone of souls.

She wills her mind to merge with the golden light and remembers love.

 

*****

 

“I should have…”

“It was her choice, Clint.”  Laura makes a gesture as if to reach for his arm, but stops and pulls her hand back. “ _Her_ gift of life to the world.   _Her_ gift to your friends, and to us _._ ”

She looks over to Wanda for support.

 _“_ So is it really right to take that away from her by beating yourself up like this?”

“I’m not…”  He pauses for a second.  Fair is fair. “Okay, fine.  I _am_.  The beating up part, I mean. But why shouldn’t I?”

Clint sounds more irritable than despondent, although these days it’s hard to tell.  Some days he honours what Natasha had done with pride and respect, but the habits of five years are hard to break and he usually cycles back to anger, loss, and grief.

In a night-time whispered conversation on the porch later that evening, Wanda asks Laura how that makes her feel, her husband mourning his partner when he should be focusing on rebuilding their lives together.  The answer surprises her.

“Don’t forget that we lost her, too,” Laura says.  “She’s part of our family. Everywhere, people have been reunited with their loved ones.  Nate doesn’t understand why he can’t have his Auntie Nat back.”

Of course, she knows that’s not really what Wanda is asking and so she continues, to the best of her ability.  It’s been a long time since she’d had to articulate what she knows, what she feels, and how Natasha fits into their lives. 

“He was hers long before he became mine - and she was his.  She’s been the one part of his soul that I could never reach, even if I’d wanted to.  I knew that going in. She’s the part of him that lets him do the things he did for SHIELD, that gave him the ability to be an Avenger.  Those aren’t qualities you can bring home to a family, so he kept them for her. _With_ her.  I may be his hearth, but Natasha is his fire.  And no, it’s never bothered me, because all things considered I got the better part of the deal, and of him.  The kids and I - we have his heart. I think that’s why he became what he did when we vanished.”

She looks Wanda straight in the eye when she continues.

“Now that Natasha is gone... It’s like he left half of himself on Vormir.  I don’t think we know how much of that part of Clint, the one that belonged to Natasha, made it possible for him to be here with us.  I want her back as much as he does, so we can all be whole.”

 

*****

 

Time has passed, or maybe it hasn’t.  Nothing changes, until it does, and for a moment the golden light flickers and darkens.  Natasha sits up. She’s decided it’s best to go with images of body action for whatever her non-corporeal form here is up to. it’s just easier that way and everyone else seems to be doing the same thing, more or less.  

But that change in the light? That was real, of that she has no doubt.

Had someone used the Stone?   

 _Did it work?_   _Did we win?_   

Or was it Thanos, ending things?

Is time even linear in here, or is this place like the Quantum Realm where everything exists all at once and she might be witnessing an event long past?  

All valid questions, although she finds herself curiously lacking in urgency to see them answered.  Before, she might have banged her imaginary fist against one of those sculpted columns; now, with the endless beats of time blending one into the other, she just looks to the golden sky to provide a reply.

It does not.

 

*****

 

In the bright sun of the morning, after the kids have scrambled onto their school bus and they’ve cleaned up the breakfast debris, Clint takes a different tack.

“What if we’re missing something in all of this?  I mean, ‘Dominion of Death at the Celestial Centre of the Galaxy’. What the fuck does that even mean?  A place where they store dead people? Some sort of intergalactic hocus-pocus? Which reminds me, I didn’t see any skeletons when I was there.  Anywhere. Not even on that fucking rock where people supposedly…”

He stops, unable to finish the sentence, and turns his head away.

Wanda finishes drying Nate’s cereal bowl, the one with Pooh and Eeyore on it, and sets it down in the cupboard.  Vision’s death hadn’t been part of the Snap and couldn’t be undone with another. Neither could Pietro’s, so much longer ago and yet still so raw.  They have that in common now, she and Clint - irrevocable loss. But over the last five years he seems to have evolved survivor’s guilt to a high artform, not to mention a habit, and what he needs right now is a whack over the head.

She shakes her head.

“Clint.  It’s irreversible.  You said so yourself.  Maybe it’s time to move on.”

He’s clearly not interested in moving on and parries her comment with ease.

“Yeah, well.  That’s what I thought when you all had gone,” he replies, absently rubbing the tattooed skull on his arm.  “You, Laura, the kids. That’s what e _verybody_ thought when half the world had vanished.  And yet, here we are. _Shazam._ ”

Laura turns from the cutlery drawer where she’s been sorting knives.

“Okay then, just for the sake of argument,” she says bluntly, “why would the Guardian of the Stone tell a lie?”

Clint shoots his wife a look that’s an interesting mix of surprise at the challenge and gratitude at her willingness to engage.

“You know, funny you should ask, babe.  Because I finally realized what’s been bothering me.  I was talking to Bucky the other day, seeing how he’s doing.  We got talking about Steve taking the stones back, because I never got that story.  I described that red floating guy, which I really hadn’t before, at least not to him, and he said it sounded like the guy who founded Hydra, back during the War.  Johan Schmidt _.  Red Skull_ , he called him; Bucky met him when he was a POW.  Said the guy got sucked out of Steve’s plane by the Tesseract.  Not sure what that means, guy gets toasted by one Infinity Stone and set up to guard another, but that’s one hell of a coincidence, right?”

A small chill raises the hairs on Wanda’s neck and she feels the power in her mind quicken and crackle, seeking a way out through her veins.  Conscious that the sight of the red lightning bolts coming out of her fingertips might unnerve Laura, she buries her hands in the dishtowel.

 _“Schmidt?_ Are you sure?  Von Strucker had a picture of him in the lab in Sokovia.  In the lab where he… where Hydra changed me and Pietro with the Mind Stone.  Von Strucker called Schmidt a visionary, a man who turned magic into science.  Maybe now he is turning science into magic?”          

The kitchen sounds fall silent as all three of them stand still, looking at each other, momentarily lost for words.

Laura takes a deep breath, as if she’s about to wade into something over her head, but there is determination in her voice when she speaks.  

“I don’t know anything about science or magic.  But I _can_ do math.  So if this is the same guy, regardless of how he may have gotten to Vormir, he can only have been there since 1945, when Captain Rogers’ plane went down, right?  That’s a long time from the Big Bang that supposedly created those stones. So he must be pretty new at this job.”

Clint bangs his fist on the kitchen table, making the salt and pepper shakers dance.

“You are totally right, babe.  Also - since when has a Nazi ever told the truth?”

 

*****

 

There was a Russian fairy tale Natasha had read - before the Red Room seized the book and decreed it to be ‘unbecoming’, with appropriate punishment – that involved a raven.  Every thousand years the raven would fly to a granite mountain a thousand miles high to sharpen its beak. When it had whittled down the mountain to nothing, the story went, the first second of eternity would have passed.

The Infinity Stones, according to Wong, predate the universe.  What do time and eternity mean to them? Everything, or nothing at all?

Once upon a time, Natasha might have longed for the serenity that envelops this timeless world and the souls within it.  For a week’s holiday, maybe - going to ground with Clint after a particularly difficult mission. In truth, once it had become obvious that the consequence of her choice was not oblivion but a Zen garden filled with still water, tranquility is what she should reasonably have expected and embraced as a reward. But maybe she hasn’t been there long enough yet - she still has  questions; her edge has not yet worn off.

Talking to the others who inhabit the Soul Stone passes the time, if there is such a thing.  The others offer little insight into the nature of their communal prison - _prison, prism, that’s funny, no?_  She tries to make that joke, but no one laughs.  Neither does anyone rage or despair. All is calm, all is golden.

If one of the others had ever been curious about this world they’re in, that feeling has long since been worn down; their personalities feel as polished and smooth as pebbles on a beach.  

But old habits die hard. For Natasha that includes gathering intelligence, just in case it might come in useful someday (or when the raven next comes back to whet its beak).  Besides, keeping her mind occupied reduces the chance that she might lose it.

Some, like Sripat’ha of Morag, must have been here for a million years, at least if Nebula’s story and Natasha’s own brief impressions of that abandoned planet are correct.  Even in the timeless glow of the Soul World a million years is more than sufficient to erode a mind.

In Sripat’ha’s telling, of course, she’d arrived only recently, although the evenness of her mind suggests it’s been polished to an unearthly smoothness by the passage of at least several seconds of eternity.  When her erstwhile lover had thrown her over the cliff his Noble Intent had been to save their world from oblivion. Natasha tries hard not to think about how this act of human sacrifice had done absolutely nothing beyond possibly giving Sripat’ha’s killer the fleeting satisfaction of having ‘given his all’; the planet had fallen to the ravages of the Power Stone in the blink of an eye.  Building block intel is what it is, even here in the realm of trapped souls.

Based on Sripat’ha’s (possibly failing) recollection, there had been no Guardian of the Soul Stone all those years ago, just a disembodied voice in their minds, telling them what was needed to claim the Stone.  Eternity, it seems, is only for those who dwell within it; the personnel administering the ‘Dominion of Death’ and ‘Centre of Celestial Existence’ labels are subject to change.

Interesting.

Masking her thoughts must have succeeded; Natasha leaves Sripat’ha sitting in her temple, one finger trailing in the waters, her serenity undisturbed.  Natasha wonders how long it will take until she, too, surrenders to tranquility and eternal peace.

 

*****

 

“The way I see it, that red floating Nazi guy said that in order to possess the Stone you had to give it a soul.”  Laura speaks slowly, as if thinking out loud. “But didn’t Bruce just… _use_ it, to Snap everyone back?  And Tony, too? If that Guardian was right, _you_ should have been the only one who could have snapped everyone back, Clint, because you were the one who won the Stone.”

Clint gets ready to protest, to remind her of what use of the Stones had cost Tony… But then it occurs to him: Tony had died only _after_ he’d used the Glove, from the power he had generated.   _Not_ in order to make the Soul Stone do his bidding.  How had they missed that detail before?

“You’re _right,_ honey,” he says, unable to contain a sudden excitement. And when you think about it, I tossed the glove to T'Challa, and he threw it to Parker…  All of them, whoever else helped relay it to Tony, they just grabbed it and ran with it. And they’re all still here.  No human sacrifice necessary for any of them.”

Wanda says out loud what they’re all thinking now.

“That means the Guardian lied.  Or he only told part of the truth.  Because it seems you only need to sacrifice a life to get the Stone off Vormir, not to take possession of it anywhere else.”

For a moment they sit in silence, letting this new insight settle in.  Of course, just that knowledge alone won’t bring Natasha back, but now Clint‘s mind picks up Wanda’s and Laura’s words and starts racing with their ideas, like he had with that glove.

“And if he lied about that, maybe he lied about the sacrifice being irreversible too. To discourage casual stone collectors.”

Clint absently runs his fingers over his tattoo as he searches his memories of the time he'd spent dealing death across the planet, for new perspectives on how to deal with its supposed 'Dominion'.  The attempt doesn’t work, not really. Besides, there are places in his mind that he probably shouldn’t try to plumb in the presence of others. But the image of the grinning skull on his arm, so much like that of the Vormir wraith, does provide him with the determination to voice a thought he has been forming for some time now.

“We have to get that Stone back.  If she’s in there – and I’m sure she is – maybe we can get her out.”

 

*****

 

A new shrine blinks into existence without warning.  Natasha searches within herself for the curiosity she knows she should feel; the energy required is not easy to muster. 

But eventually, she does.  Assuming time is unidirectional here, has something just happened to bring the Stone back to Vormir?  It must have - and Thanos has just come to claim it. They had played with time, sending everyone back to bring the Infinity Stones into the future; time would have continued on its course since that day in 2014 when she and Clint had fought for the right to die.  To come to this place.

 _Thanos took my sister to Vormir,_ Nebula had told them, _and she didn’t come back_.  Was this her now, having played her involuntary part in changing the course of the universe?  

The silhouette of Natasha’s new neighbour waxes and wanes like her own - a mirage, that somehow is both a hesitant little girl and a tall, lithe woman.  Never old, though; never stooped, never broken like some of the others here. Brought into the Stone in her prime, like Natasha herself had been.

Natasha watches as the woman holds preternaturally still, absorbing and assessing her surroundings, before starting to pace within her space. There’s a coiled grace in her movements that proclaims her to be a fighter and the outer dimensions of her memory-form give off an emerald glow.  Another humanoid species, then. They all seem shaped similarly, although after Vision, Nebula, and Thanos, Natasha has stopped wondering about possible colours for people’s skin.

What will this woman’s story turn out to be?

It’s curious – although perhaps not – that among those who, like Natasha, had _chosen_ to come here of their own accord males and females are represented in roughly equal proportions, with a couple of non- or multiple-gendered beings making up the rest.  Of those whose sacrifice came at the hands of another, virtually all are female.

Must be a male thing to say, “I love you more than anything, sweetheart – now go fly over that ledge for me so I can get my hands on the prize. You won’t mind so much, will you?”

The bedrock on which the Black Widow program was built, it occurs to Natasha.

Which will the newcomer turn out to be: _Beau Geste_ or involuntary sacrifice?  Given what Natasha has learned here and through much of her life, the odds are with the latter.

The golden sky flickers briefly; the Stone must have been activated again.  Whoever sent the newcomer here must have used it almost immediately. _The Snap, this time?_

She and Clint had gone to Vormir in 2014, what seems like yesterday.  Have four years passed already? To Natasha’s mind, it’s been mere days, or a few very long hours.  This raises another question: if time has no meaning here, are events outside the Stone still happening in any sequence she knows?  

The woman - no, girl now - stands stockstill and cocks her head.  From her vantage point it almost looks as if she is speaking to someone.

But that should not be possible. The moment passes and the woman across the water resumes her pacing.

Natasha raises her hand to give a wave, a greeting she hopes will be understood across the distance.  A new story would be welcome to break the golden hours, even if it is one that may set her teeth on edge.

And maybe she’ll learn something new, something to delay the deterioration that is starting to take hold of her mind, in this world without edges with which to keep it sharp.

 

*****

 

Clint pushes back his chair hard, making the coffee mugs dance on the table, and glares at everyone in turn.

“But what if we’re right?” he snarls, letting his frustration show.  “Don’t we owe it to Nat to try? If her soul is in that Stone, we can find a way to get it back out.  We’re still the Avengers, dammit.”

Rhodey looks worried.  He’s been nervous around Clint ever since he had returned to the team; it’s only gotten worse since they’d gone into space together and Clint had come back without Nat.  What’s the good Colonel afraid of – that Clint will go full berserker on his friends?

“That’s just nuts, Barton,” Rhodes says now.  “How could you get a person into a rock?”

“I can go into rocks,” Scott offers.  “Whenever I go subatomic. Easy-peasy.  Just slide in between the molecules.”

Rhodey exhales slowly, while Clint throws Ant-Man a surprised and grateful look.

Bruce just shakes his head.   He too has turned grief into an art form; losing Tony and Natasha, and watching Cap throw in the towel for a girl none of them have ever met, has been hard on the Big Guy.  Maintaining the status quo is his thing these days. _Risk averse,_ Hill would call it in her best bureaucratese.

Sam leans back in his chair.  The Captain America mantle is growing on him.  Lucky for Clint, Sam is making it his job these days to remind everyone that they’ve come too far as a team to dismiss each other’s ideas, no matter how crazy they might sound.

“What if Clint is right, Bruce?” he says.  “Why should there be a difference between how _that_ stone works and the one that used to be in Vision’s head? Shuri decoded the molecular structure of the Mind Stone, and then Wanda managed to get her mind inside it to destroy it.”

 _And destroyed Vision and her happiness with it._ The thought hangs unspoken in the air.

“Exactly.”  Clint sends a challenging frown in Banner’s direction.  “Plus, we know that you get through space _through_ the Tesseract.  From both sides, no less.  Doesn’t that make it more like a wormhole than a rock?”

Scott strokes his chin and exchanges a look with Hope.

“And the Ether, Thor told us, is like a liquid,” he says.  “ _None_ of these suckers are just stones.  All this is about _physics._ Quantum physics, to be precise.”

Hope, who has been listening attentively, asks the obvious questions.

“But Steve took the Soul Stone back to Vormir, didn’t he?  If we wanted to get inside it through the quantum realm, wouldn’t we have to go get it first?  And wouldn’t it just ask for another sacrifice? We’d be worse off than we are now.”

Clint is ready with the answer.

“Only if you go looking for it on Vormir.  As Laura figured out, that’s the _only_ place they play that particular shit show,” he says.  “I mean, I gave the Soul Stone to you, Bruce, and you put it into the glove and used it to undo the Snap.  It mangled your arm but you’re still here, right? On the battlefield everyone basically ran with it like a football, until it ended up with Tony.  Yes, Tony died. But that was because he’s not the Hulk, and he died _after_ he used it.   _Not_ to get his hands on it in the first place.”

Despite the long, impassioned speech - one of the longest Clint may ever have delivered - Rhodey is still not convinced.

“So suddenly everyone agrees with me now, that this whole thing was a hoax like I said on the dock after Nat died? I recall you being pretty pissed at the suggestion then.  Assuming we’re right and it’s _not_ irreversible, why would that Nazi ghost ask for the sacrifice of someone you love when he doesn’t actually need that?”

Sam shrugs.

“Why does Rocket keep asking people for their prosthetics?  To feed the mystique? Which reminds me, I wonder what Steve said to that guy when they met, and whether he’s still on the job after that.”

Bruce looks thoughtful now.  He picks up one of the mugs that had taken a hit from Clint’s impatience and dabs at the small puddle of coffee around and underneath it with a kleenex.  It’s a strangely dainty thing to do with that oversized hand, but it lends the weight of careful consideration to what he says next.

“So if we went back and picked up the Stone somewhere else…”

Clint expels a deep breath.

“Yes.  And I know _exactly_ when we need to go.  I mean where. Where, and when.”

His explanation goes over about as well as could be expected with Rhodey, who races several tactical steps ahead.

“So let me get this straight.  You want to go back to upstate New York to pick up the glove where you dropped it when Thanos blew the place up, bring it back here so Shuri can examine the Soul Stone, get Natasha out, and then take it back into the battle?”

Clint blinks at him.  That’s putting it pretty starkly, but...

“Yeah.  Basically.”

“And you want to take it back without getting killed, and with enough precision to ensure that the timeline in which we beat Thanos doesn’t get amputated by mistake and Tony died for nothing in this one.”

Rhodey has been counting the issues down on his fingers.  Pretty soon he’ll need a second hand. Maybe a third. Clint refuses to be fazed.  Best way to counter pesky details is with chutzpah; he’s learned that watching Nick Fury over the years.

“Ideally, yes.”

“And you expect all of us to help you with that batshit-crazy plan?” 

There is some shuffling of positions around the room, but no one else gets in on the cross-examination or shakes their head, which Clint considers promising.  He forges on.

“Yeah, man, I do.  We did it once, so that shouldn’t be so hard to do it again, right?  Far as I can see, we just have to time things so we bring the glove back before Tony…”

He stops himself. _Tony._ What if they…

They all sit, stand or pace in silence for a while, not speaking.  Remembering Strange’s pronouncement: _one shot._  The one in which Tony doesn’t get a do-over. Plus, going back in might put even that at risk.

Sam shrugs off the mood, his eyes flicking over to the shield in the corner.

“Okay then.”

Clint is momentarily lost for words.

“Okay?”

“Yes.   _Okay._  I don’t know how they handled this crap in the army, but in the outfit I served with no one got left behind.  Not even if they’d died. At least with Vision and Tony there was a body. Nat didn’t even get that.” Sam hesitates before adding, “I think it’s what Cap would have done.  After some kind of motivational Crispin’s Day speech, which I can’t do yet. I’m working on it.”

Hope clears her throat.  She’s been sitting there quietly, occasionally exchanging glances with Scott, but not weighing in.  Maybe it’s because she doesn’t feel as comfortable as the rest of them are with each other, or maybe she’s the type who only speaks when she has something to say.  Turns out she has something to say now.

“There’s only one problem with all this, and Sam just put his finger on it.”  She has the look of someone who hates to pass on bad news. “When my mother was trapped in the Quantum Realm, it was still… _her_ , inside.  Shrunken to the size of nanoparticles, but otherwise intact.”

“So?”  Clint is getting impatient.  He’s keen to take Lang and van Dyne’s equipment to Wakanda, so that T'Challa’s little sister can do her thing analyzing the Stone the second they manage to bring it forward to today, and he can nanoparticle his way inside the fucking thing.  “The problem is what, exactly?”

Hope puts her hand on his arm and purses her lips.  Clint doesn’t know her all that well but she reminds him of Laura, telling one of the kids their pet goldfish died or that they’re all out of marshmallows.

“From what I understand, Natasha’s soul may well be inside that Stone. But her body… Her body is on Vormir.”

 

*****

 

Gamora. Nebula’s sister.  A Guardian of the Galaxy - as Clint would say, it’s not bragging if you can do it.

It doesn’t take them long to discover how deeply their stories are entwined, across space and time and the hearts of people they both have grown to love or respect.  Thor. Rocket. Above all, Nebula. The knowledge does not necessarily bring comfort.

_You’ve met my sister.  Rocket. But not… Peter?  What about Mantis? Drax? Groot?_

_Groot, yes.  The walking tree.  He came to Earth with Rocket and Thor.  He fought bravely in Wakanda, but vanished in the Snap.  Your other friends were on Titan with Nebula, when Thanos used the Glove; she was the only one who came back with my friend Tony.  We became friends in the years after. She came with me and Clint to Morag._

She doesn’t tell Gamora that she’d left Nebula waiting for Peter Quill there, to disrupt his quest for the Power Stone.  It seems unnecessarily cruel. 

Instead, she adds, _I am sorry.  I know how you feel.  It never ceases to hurt._

Gamora closes her eyes, silently railing against her losses.  She doesn’t allow herself the luxury of grief for very long. It does not seem to be her way anymore than it is Natasha’s.

 _What do you mean, ‘the years after’?_ Gamora challenges her. _My father only just used the Stones.  I talked to him after he did._

 _If I caught the world in an hourglass..._ Who’d sung that?  Ah, yes. Sting. One of Laura’s favourite songs, no doubt because of a lifetime spent waiting for Clint.

 _It’s complicated,_ Natasha says after a while.   _We went back in time to recover the Stones.  Back before Thanos killed you and used the glove.  Nebula and Rocket were with us. It’s the reason I’m here now, before all that happens, just like I was there after it did.  If we win, if they succeed, then everyone will come back. We_ will _bring everyone back._  

 _Everyone?  And through time travel?_ Even in the Soul Realm Gamora’s side eye is impressive.   _You and I will never know, will we?  My father took that from me. Like he took everything else._

They remain silent for a moment, or a century.

 _You were you talking to someone earlier, weren’t you?_ Natasha tries to make her question casual.   _Shortly after you arrived.  The Stone darkened and you…._

Gamora’s form shrinks; it’s the little girl who answers.

_My father._

Natasha is gripped by a sudden sense of excitement, something she hasn’t felt since she and Clint had shared their wonder about being in outer space together.

_Thanos?  He can come here?_

Gamora cocks her head in thought.  She looks to be about the age Natasha had been when she had entered the Red Room.

_I saw his image and heard his voice, but he wasn’t actually here.  Maybe he spoke to me through the Stone. He must still have it then, after using it._

In this timeline, anyway.  Natasha’s mind starts racing. The languidness of the Soul Realm is draining away as she feels a semblance of her own sharp self returning.

If Thanos can speak to someone inside the Stone _…_  She hesitates to finish the thought.  For a second she sees Clint’s anguished face above her, his eyes locked to hers as she falls.  Screaming a denial.

Natasha takes one of the Zen garden rocks and tosses it into the calm waters, where it sinks without a ripple or a trace.

_If it’s possible to communicate from outside the Stone, our friends will find a way.  And if there is one, they will come for us and when they do, you can be sure they will make a splash._

 

****

 

“What about the Doctor?”

Sam looks at Wanda and frowns.

“Strange?  He’s a neurosurgeon.  Last time I looked, that requires a body.  Even a wizard can’t do resurrections. Besides, I doubt you can pry him out of that Sanctum of his.  Wong says they have years of reconstruction work to do, and I get the impression he’s not the guy to multi-task.”

Wanda shakes her head, making her hair fly.

“Not Strange.  The one from Korea.  The one who built…” Her voice catches.  “The scientist who helped build Vision.”

For the first time since Hope’s devastating comment, Clint takes his hands off his face and sits up straight.  His eyes laser-focus on Wanda.

“She means Dr. Helen Cho.  She fixed me after those Hydra goons got me in Sokovia, when we first met.  Laura says she can tell where the bits aren’t me, but I sure can’t. Even the nerves have grown back.”

“No.   _No._ Nononono.”  Funny, even at eight-feet-something and with the chest of an orc, Banner manages to sound whiny.  “You are _not_ going to turn Nat into an Android.  Clint, that is nuts. I mean, even if we…”

Wanda glares at him.

“And what is wrong with someone being an Android, if they have a soul?”

Bucky, who hasn’t said anything in forever, shrugs and mumbles, “I got a metal arm and I’m doin’ okay.  And that blue alien dame, she’s almost all parts. So what?“

Clint slaps both hands flat on the table.  As far as he’s concerned, this discussion is done.

“So, how do we get hold of Dr. Cho?”

As it turns out, Helen Cho has not been idle in the years since they’d last seen her – back in the good old days, when the enemy was made only of Vibranium, not space magic.  She looks older, like she wasn’t among the half of humanity who’d sat out the last five years.

When she answers their call she’s in a lab with a large tank in the background. Inside it floats a figure that looks distinctly human.

She recognizes Clint right away, raising a quizzical eyebrow by way of a question.  He lifts his shirt to show the area she’d patched; there is no scar, no noticeable transition.  All Clint.

“You heal well, Mr. Barton,” she says.

Clint briefly considers correcting her, because while he’s physically in better shape than he’s been in years, his mind sure has taken a beating.  But she probably doesn’t need to know that.

Helen’s own eyes have the haunted look of those left behind, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out just how she may have been spending the last few years and why.  Clint fervently hopes that whoever she had lost has come back to her, and stayed - even after (if) they found out what she’d been trying to do while they were gone.

“Guess so,” he replies instead, making his tone as light as he is able.  “What are you doing, Doc, growing mermaids now?”

She shakes her head in too-vigorous denial.

“I’ve moved from synthetic tissue technology to DNA-based full-body re-growth.  The body you are looking at, once I’ve infused it with the right cellular matrix, will allow brain transplants in cases where a body is damaged beyond a chance of survival.  Into what is essentially the patient’s own body.”

It’s only part of the explanation, Clint is pretty certain, but that doesn’t matter.

Rhodey stares at the screen, mouth half open, muttering, “Sonofabitch!” while Sam makes a _Yes!_ punch with his fist.

“See?” Clint says.  “Told ya. Good catch, Wand.”

He turns back to the screen and Helen Cho.

“How long is the process, and what do you need for DNA?”

 

*****

 

The rest of the people - souls, inhabitants - of what Natasha has come to think of as their “mini-verse” are long past being excited about anything, having succumbed to the languor of golden peace over who knows how many undefined eternities.  Great conversation partners they are not, and even less interested in discussing the possible science behind their imprisonment here.

That there is some kind of science at work Natasha doesn’t doubt.   _Magic is just science we don’t understand yet,_ a famous science fiction writer once said.  But how to crack the code, or track and reverse whatever beamed them into this realm, and how to get out without one of Lang’s Quantum suits?

She has given up counting the other souls here, since they tend to flicker in and out of her range of vision.  There are no more than a few dozen, as well as her and Gamora. It looks like the market for Infinity Stones is limited, or else the place would be wildly over-populated given the apparent longevity of people here. And the only one who retains any kind of conversational edge, rather than operating from a basis of languor and diffidence, is Gamora.

At first, they share memories: how Natasha had come across her sister, the raccoon, and his tree. How Gamora had met Thor, as a fly on the Benatar’s windshield, somewhere in the depths of space.  How their friends became the other’s friends too.

The universe doesn’t seem all that big, when you consider the odds of those encounters, not to mention the two of them meeting down here now and the friends they have in common.  Maybe Fury was right and they are the kind of people who attract one another: solitudes, drawn into each other’s gravity fields.

Like she and Clint had been, from the beginning.  No longer lovers - at least not in the conventional sense - but far more than friends, still and always.  Kindred souls. Quantum points, inextricably entangled.

She pictures him again, trying desperately to be the one to give himself to the Soul Stone in her place.  It’s a good thing he failed; Hawkeye’s capacity for serenity is strictly limited to drawing a bowstring, home improvements, and hanging out with his kids.  The thought of him pacing one of these Japanese-style temples - holding pens or anchor points - almost makes her giggle, until she remembers the look on his face in Tokyo.  

 _Do you believe in_ s _oul mates?_ Natasha finds herself asking Gamora, since this is as good a place as any to wonder about such things.  Gamora seems torn between snorting and shaking her head, but the fact that she can’t seem to decide suggests she is prepared to consider the question.

 _Peter is a train wreck,_ she finally says.   _He’s a human disaster with the self-esteem of a ten-year-old boy, who thinks life should come with a soundtrack.  He also has the biggest heart in the galaxy. I have absolutely no idea why I fell in love with him._

Natasha chuckles.

 _He sounds a lot like Clint._ She pauses for a moment, and asks a question that never seemed important before.   _Are soul mates forever?_

 

*****

 

“Now remember what we said about the time branches, Clint.  This time, it’s really _really_ important to put it back in the right spot, okay?  So remember exactly where you’re getting it from.”

Clint flips down the visor on the time suit so Banner won’t see him roll his eyes.  It’s not like he doesn’t know what would happen if he fails to pick up that glove in the future-past, were he to fail starting the relay that will end with Tony killing himself to save the universe.

_Fuck time travel._

“Yeah,” he says.  “Copy that.”

Sam taps on his helmet and Clint opens it back up.

“What now?”

“On your way back here, can you drop in on Steve in, say, 1976 and sneak a look at his girl?  Me and Barnes have a bet.”

Clint flips the visor back down without answering.   _People._

“Ready,” he says.

The ruins of the Avengers’ facility look and feel and sound and smell exactly the same as it did the last time; he can hear the screeching and howling of Thanos’ mindless minions skittering upwards in the tunnel.  A toxic stew of explosives, melting steel, burnt plastic and alien blood assaults his nostrils. In a few seconds, an explosion will fill the air with searing heat, and expel Clint’s slightly younger self towards the same heap of rubble and concrete rods on which he now stands.

He ducks into the tunnel. The glove - more like a hunk of mangled metal with shining, gaudy accents - sits on a jagged rock that may once have been part of the underground heating system.  A shadow is approaching from down in the tunnel, stops and turns to fire some arrows into the screaming void behind him. Clint jumps, grabs the glove off the ledge in mid-flight, and activates the _return_ button before he lands.

The rest of the jump he completes on the platform, almost rolling off with the momentum.  Banner catches him before he can fall.

“You have it?” he asks, rather unnecessarily because how can you miss the thing that makes and breaks worlds, reality, people, and time.  

But that’s not what it is for Clint, not anymore.  He presses the glove to his chest.

“No,” he says.  “I have _Natasha.”_

 

*****

 

There’s a shift.

Natasha doesn’t know what it is or what it means – how could she, stuck in this mini-verse like a fly in amber – but it does not feel malignant.  Instead, the world feels more familiar than it did just a moment ago.

It feels like _home_.

 _Clint?_ she says - thinks, whispers, shouts, screams - into the golden sky. _Are you there?  I’m in here…_

Of course, the idea that Clint might have come back for the Stone is absurd. Although frankly not as absurd as the thought that he might not, if he had any idea that something of her was trapped inside. She shakes her head against the tsunami of thoughts and emotions cresting inside her mind.

 _What is it?_  Gamora materializes by her side, startling her.

Natasha recovers her equilibrium enough to examine just what she can actually attest to.  She has no new knowledge, evidence, data, or intelligence to offer. But this is the Soul World and maybe there are other forces in play?

Her hand, or whatever it is that makes her think of it being ‘her hand’, reaches reflexively for her throat.  She touches what is there, and yes, dammit, it almost feels like a touch. She feels something that wasn’t there before: a narrow chain, with a small pendant.  Pointy on one end, wider at the other. The arrow necklace Clint had given her, eons ago, to celebrate their partnership after a particularly galling mission.

She knows she hadn’t worn it to Vormir – “No extraneous metal under the time suits”, Stark had told them.  Of course, he’d probably meant her Glocks, but she had taken off her necklace because they’d had to get it right…

Natasha sits down on the steps into ‘her’ temple, leans her head back against a column, and closes her eyes, reaching out to Gamora with her thoughts.

 _We’re no longer alone._

_I feel nothing._ Gamora sounds carefully bland.   _When Thanos spoke to me, I could feel him.  It was like he was here. Whoever is out there, they aren’t looking for me._  

Maybe only the person who takes the Stone can reach through to those inside?  That would mean Gamora might be trapped here forever. Thanos is not known for revisiting his decisions, let alone for rescue operations. For a moment they sit in silence.

 _If my friends manage…_  Natasha starts again.   _We’re in this together, you and I.  If they get me out first, I’ll come back for you.  Somehow. That’s a promise. You do the same, okay?_

Gamora gives her a long look, and finally a small smile.

 _Deal,_ she says.   

But, as Clint had said in the spaceship, they’re a long way from Budapest, or anywhere on Earth for that matter, and crossing back into the world of the living is nothing but a dream.   

Natasha lets her fingers trail in the water, where, as always, they leave no wake.  Because the incontrovertible truth is that she is nothing but a spectre, while her body lies broken on the rocks of Vormir.

 

*****

 

Shuri examines the Infinity Gauntlet with a mixture of revulsion and desire, lifting and turning it and holding it up to the light.  

“No, little sister.  You cannot keep it or play with it,” T'Challa says fondly but firmly.  “Only the one Stone, only for a short time. Clint must return it to the past, so he can find it there and bring us all back.  So we can be _here,_ to do this today _._ ”

“Spoilsport,” she huffs and rolls her eyes at him, but there is no real venom in it.  She reminds Clint of Cooper, if he had fourteen PhDs and unlimited money for toys.

Shuri gingerly removes the Soul Stone from its setting. It’s amazingly loose for something so precious, so potentially lethal.  To everyone’s unspoken relief, the act seems to require no additional death. She inserts it between two anchor points in a machine, the function of which Clint doesn’t bother to guess.  There it hovers and turns, unaffected by gravity, its glow filling the room with a warm, pulsating light.

Clint can’t take his eyes off it.  Is it completely idiotic to try and send messages into the thing with his thoughts?  No matter. He does it anyway. No one will know. 

 _I’m here, Nat.  We have you. I’m coming for you.  Soon._  

In the other part of the room, Helen Cho is busy doing who knows what with that tank which, by contrast, he can’t bring himself to examine too closely.

Helen hums tunelessly as she works, like one who is accustomed to creating what amounts to replicas of human beings and has made her peace with the fact that others might consider that the height of ghoulishness.  What must she have gone through during those lost years, to get to this point? Brilliant and lonely, trying to do what she could, with what she knew how to do, in the hope of restoring those she loved - and thus the world?   

A cloud of familiar bright red hair floats in the liquid as Clint’s eyes skitter across the tank.  The sight _is_ vaguely disturbing, even though it had been he who’d supplied Helen with the brush that Nat used to keep in the guest bedroom at the farm.  Teeth would have been best, but going back to Vormir for Natasha’s remains was out of the question and DNA, Helen had said, comes in many forms. 

And so the thing… the body floating in the tank is, to all intents and purposes, Natasha and yet not Natasha. Not yet. 

It certainly looks like her, suspended in some unknown but clear liquid.  Synthesized amniotic fluid? Floating serenely and not breathing; that will come later, Helen has reassured him.  The instruments on the side of the tank clearly show a heartbeat and basic brainstem activity. Clint is irrationally reminded of the moment when he’d breached the waters of Vormir, the Soul Stone by his side. Will it be like that for Natasha, when she wakes inside this new body?

At least they’ll have something of hers to bury, if things don’t work out.

 _This whole thing was your idea,_ he hears Laura’s voice chiding him inside his head.   _So stop wallowing,_ _put on your big boy pants, and get on with it, Clinton Francis Barton._

Laura had wisely declined to come to Wakanda with him.  “I suspect I’m better at raising kids than the dead,” she had said and added, “You go bring her back to us.  We’ll be right here, waiting for you both to come home. It’s been too long.”

Shuri walks over to what looks like a souped-up spectrometer and taps out commands on its buttons with the liquid grace of a concert pianist.  A series of meaningless – to Clint, anyway – numbers and graphs appear in the air above her.

“Aha,” Shuri says, studying them with satisfaction. “Just what I thought.   _So_ obvious.”

She now plays with the shimmering images themselves, moving them around and aside, sometimes stretching them or scrunching them up to discard them.  The whole scene reminds Clint of Dr. Strange creating doors into other places with an array of shimmering circles; the sad truth is that to an uneducated carnie like himself magic and science tend to be one and the same.

“Thought what?” he says, even though he’s pretty sure he won’t understand the answer.

“The molecular structures of this and the Mind Stone are very similar,” she replies.  (So far, so good.) “But there are energy signatures here that weren’t present in the other one, at least not in quite the same form.  Also, this one has several dozen of them; the Mind Stone had only the one. When I examined it, I assumed it was…”

“Vision?”  Wanda’s voice cracks a little.  “He was part of the Mind Stone, just as it was part of him.”

Shuri nods. She uses both hands to expand the image and sure enough, there are tiny little bright spots within the flat planes of the Stone’s crystalline structure, like pinpoints of light in a faraway galaxy.

“Exactly.  But there’s another difference – here, the energy signatures are separate.  They’re contained inside the Stone, but not integral to its structure. Each of them seems surrounded by its own crystalline sheath, although they’re apparently not bound to those.  Look, this one just blinked out and moved into another spot in the matrix.”

Scott and Hope are bent over the machinery, whispering at each other. Hope scribbles a few notes in a language surely only physicists understand.

“And what do you think they are?”   

T'Challa is still here, watching his little sister weave her magic.  He’d unlocked his Kingdom’s unlimited resources for this undertaking. Out of respect, he’d said, for a woman who had always put doing what was right above mere rules, especially when it mattered most.  He seems to be lingering in the room now out of curiosity. Or friendship.

Clint knows the answer to T’Challa’s question, as surely as if he could actually operate that gizmo holding the Stone himself, and provides it with a shrug.

“Souls trapped inside the Stone?  Who knows how long this sacrifice mumbo jumbo has been going on. There could be dozens of them in there.”  

“I suspect the request for a sacrifice is just a fancy way of saying that it takes a specific form of energy to dislodge the Stone from wherever it is anchored when it’s on Vormir,” Shuri says.  “You need kinetic energy to move an object; thermal energy to change its state. Maybe to move this, you need the energy that creates life.”

“And the part about that needing to be someone you love?”  T'Challa remains skeptical. “Is that just a fairy tale?”

“You mean like fake news, to raise the stakes?  To stop just anyone from trying to take the thing for a spin by tossing some innocent bystander down that cliff?”  Clint starts pacing as he thinks it through. “Nat sacrificed herself for Laura and the kids and all of us here, because we’re her family.   Maybe that’s just grammar, but what the guy told us was ‘ _That_ which you love most _’_.   Not ‘ _For_ that which you love most’.“ 

He frowns, and his voice grates as he continues. 

“Unless of course he meant me letting her go would make her into my…”

Wanda grips his arm with her left hand, hard. Her rings sparkle and flash in the reflected light from the Stone.

“Don’t say that, Clint.  You’re right: sacrificing someone else isn’t the only way to move the Stone.  This isn’t about _you_ letting her go - it’s about _her_ choosing to go.   And we are where we are now, about to bring her back, because you showed us the way.”  

He looks at Wanda from under hooded eyes.   _No do-overs for Wanda and Viz_.  Vision’s mind was the Stone, and the Stone needs to go back into the glove…  What right does he have to go on another guilt binge? He clears his throat.

“Right.  You’re right.  So now we just have to figure out which one of these energy signatures belongs to Natasha, extract it, and… transfer it into the body Helen’s been building _.”_

Easy-peasy, to quote Ant-Man.  Right.

Clint has no idea when Sam and Rhodey had arrived on the scene and he almost wishes they hadn’t, because the new Captain America asks the very obvious question: “And how are we planning to do that?  Anyone got a pair of quantum tongs?” 

Hope looks up and frowns in thought. 

“That’s not a bad idea, actually.  Maybe we could treat those signatures like quantum points?”  she says. “If we find something to entangle Natasha’s signature with, the connection could...”

Rhodey nods.

“And our friend Barton here’d be the perfect end point.”  He frowns self-consciously, looking down at Clint’s hand with its wedding ring, and clears his throat.  “Because you picked up the Soul Stone, of course. No other reason.”

He looks to Sam for affirmation, but the latter only shrugs. Wanda takes a deep breath.

“You all remember I can move things with my mind, right?” she says. “And that I can read them as well.”

Everyone stares at her – Shuri, T'Challa, Sam, Rhodey, Helen, Scott, Hope. 

And Clint.

“Wanda’s been inside Natasha’s mind,” he explains, to no one in particular.  “And that might help find her.”

None of the others currently in the room had been in Sokovia or Jo’burg, the first time the Avengers had met the Scarlet Witch and her brother, back when she’d weaponized their brains and nearly driven them apart.  Wanda nods slowly, an apologetic smile playing across her lips.

“I haven’t been in yours though, Clint.  You blocked me.”  

Clint shivers a little.

“Yeah. I did, didn’t I.”

“Well,” Scott announces brightly.  “We need that second quantum point, and it looks like you’re the top choice to make the connection, Barton.  So what are we waiting for? You guys ready? Should I go subatomic, just in case?”

Shuri and Helen ignore his offer by unspoken agreement  and move over to their respective stations. Helen slides the lid off the tank and checks vital signs, while Shuri makes a few adjustments to the screen.  The image hovering in the room displays the by now familiar pattern of crystalline beauty: golden lines and angles, planes and facets dotted throughout with those small, irregular pulsing points of light.

The Stone of Souls.

Wanda’s eyes pierce Clint’s with a mixture of challenge and regret.

“Will you allow me?”

He looks from Wanda to the Mind Stone inside the gauntlet and back at Wanda, his ears ringing with the memory of whispered commands and ice-blue fear, the last time he’d surrendered his mind.  

_Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?_

It’s a little thing, after all, considering what he’d been prepared to do – what he and Natasha had both been prepared to do, and she completed – on Vormir.  In the end, if she could give her body and her soul to the unknown, then he can give his mind to a trusted friend.

 _“_ You know that I do.”

Wanda reaches for the glove and the Mind Stone; the thing that has shaped her own life and that of those she loved, in so many ways.

“This might help amplify our thoughts.”

A single tear glides down her cheek as she exchanges the Mind Stone for the ordinary gem in the pendant she always wears around her neck.  If the Stones detach easily from a given setting, they fit into new ones just as smoothly... She shudders as it touches her skin.

Clint takes a deep breath and focuses on Wanda’s hands – those long, elegant, bejeweled fingers, already glowing with an unearthly red light – as they reach for his face.

 

*****

 

They both see the sudden shaft of brightness piercing the golden sky, gliding like a searchlight over the mirror sea and coming to a stop – briefly, never lingering – over several of the closer temple structures.

It’s coming towards them now.  In all the temples Natasha can see from where she stands silhouettes are stepping outside, roused from their dreams, curious.  Watching.

 _It must be from outside,_ Gamora says.   _What is it?_

Natasha blinks slowly, as if to clear her mind.

_The light.  It’s familiar. The colour…_

Brighter than the amber-gold of the Soul Stone, clearer and sharper: the colour of the Mind Stone.Vision had worn it until he died. Wanda had drawn her power from it – does she still?

Gamora disrupts Natasha’s thoughts as if she’d heard them.  Probably she did.

_They’re looking for you.  My friends never had the Mind Stone, just Power.  Go!_

Natasha can feel Gamora’s thoughts pressing her, trying to move her.  Gamora’s shape is that of the adult warrior she must have been at the end, dressed in sleek leathers, albeit without weapons.  Natasha’s own shape is covered in SHIELD gear. Ready for anything, both of them - and misfits in the polished, amber prison. 

Natasha’s thoughts are disrupted by Gamora’s more urgent ones.

 _If the Snap has been undone, and he is alive, Peter will come back for me.  Like that stupid song he always sings, ‘Ain’t no mountain high enough…’_   

Natasha’s thoughts explode in denial.

 _No.  Absolutely not.  I’m not leaving without you.  We have to find a way to ..._  

 _They won’t know we’re here. No one will know, unless you get out and tell them.  You were here for years before me, because you chose to be. Not every burden is yours to bear. This is my choice.  I can wait my turn. Take yours. For both of us!_  

And then, _Tell Peter and Nebula and the rest of those idiots  that I love them._

Natasha takes a long, last look at Gamora, nods, and steps towards the light.

 

*****

 

Wanda’s fingers are drawing long, wispy tendrils of cool, red fire out of the air over the Soul Stone - lines that ebb and flow, dancing and twirling to a tune only she can hear. Her other hand rests against Clint’s temple.  The Mind Stone around Wanda’s neck, the third point in the triangle, shines more brightly than he can ever recall seeing it before.

He can feel something entering his mind, cool and bright and sharp, opening a set of eyes Clint never knew he possessed. He blinks and focuses on the Soul Stone.

An odd landscape stretches before him, not unlike the place where he’d awoken after he’d seen Natasha on that cliff, splayed out and broken.  Clint forces himself to swallow down the memory and concentrate on what he sees: something much like the Wadden Sea with its rivulets, mudflats and shallow tide pools, all bathed in a golden light.  Temple-like outlines stand out amid the water. Maybe these are the crystal planes and structures they’d seen on Shuri’s screen?

Vormir had been dark and cast in purple shadows, the opposite of the omnipresent gold here or maybe its complement; it’s why the Stone had stood out so much.  If Vormir was the end of all things, what does that make this place? 

He is above this world, not in it - looking in.  Clint has always seen better from a distance and the vantage point suits him perfectly.  Aware of Wanda’s presence inside his mind he scans the curved horizon - eyes strafing the landscape up and down, arresting briefly on each of the temples and the silhouettes within.  He’s supposed to look for energy signatures, but these look like actual people, not blinking spots of light, or whatever an ‘energy signature’ is supposed to be. Then suddenly… 

…he sees her, standing beside another figure outside one of those quasi-Shinto shrines.  Not a hallucination. Not a figment of his imagination, or Wanda’s manipulations. 

 _Natasha._  

She’s wearing a tac suit, but not the one she had worn to Vormir. It’s an old one, from before SHIELD had hatched Hydra, when they had first become Strike Team Delta.  Her hair, too, looks like it had then... None of that matters: it’s _her._  

Not letting her out of his vision he shouts, “ _Nat!”_  

His voice makes no sound.  Nonetheless, she looks up. 

Clint knows she shouldn’t be able to see him because he’s not there, he’s not inside the stone, but she does and their eyes lock. 

 _I see you, Nat,_ he says. And adds, unnecessarily: _It’s me.  I’m here._  

The response takes his breath away. 

_Clint?_

 

*****

 

Her last memory of him is the anguish on his face and his hand, stretched out against nothing as she fell away.  The hand is there again now, on an inhumanly long arm that cannot possibly be real - reaching down. Reaching for her. 

 _Natasha,_ she hears - feels - Clint’s voice _._  

She sees what must be his hand, like she has seen it so many times before: in sparring practice, offering to help her get up, until he’d discovered that misplaced chivalry would get him thrown down.  In the ruins of that _bodega_ in Chiapas, pulling her out of the rubble after she’d yelled at him to get out before another booby trap went off.  In Jo’burg, when Wanda had gotten into her head and she’d temporarily forgotten who, where, or when she was. Carrying her to safety.   In Tokyo, when she, in turn, had taken it to lead him out of despair.

And that first time, when he’d used it to offer her a deal instead of certain death.   

 _Take it_ , _Tash,_ his voice shouts at her even as she looks back one last time.  Natasha waves at Gamora in silent salute, turns, stretches and grasps what she is almost certain is a mere memory or reflection of what is real.  But then their fingers touch and what envelopes her is truth, not memory: Clint, and _her_. 

Home.  

 

*****

 

 _You have her?_ a second voice, not as loud or clear but very much present, rings in his head.

 _Not yet._ He stretches out his hand and, dammit, it _is_ his hand, even though he’s not really here and even though it now feels like his arm is a mile long, reaching down onto the surface.   

 _Take it, Tash!_ he shouts, and watches and nearly despairs as Natasha briefly turns away to wave at another figure on the ground.  She reaches up then and they clasp hands, and for a moment he’s back on Vormir and Natasha is dangling over the abyss and he mustn’t let go.... 

 _Now!_ he hears a voice from somewhere outside his head.  Wanda? He pulls and it’s like he’s back in the circus, picking up the acrobat girl from the ground while he’s swinging from the trapeze, but he can’t let go because there’s no one to catch her and no net.... 

 _Let her go, Clint!_ the voice commands and against his own judgment he decides to trust it, because it’s Wanda and he can’t hold on forever, he knows that now, so he lets go on the upward arc, watching the figure that looks like Natasha make a graceful line upwards through the golden canopy and… 

The voice inside his mind snaps and goes silent like a faulty wire and suddenly he’s back in Shuri’s lab, retching with vertigo and God knows what other reactions to what he’s just experienced.  He steadies himself as he sees Wanda, both hands now bathed in red light and wreathed in smoke with the tiniest pinprick of golden light held between them. 

She looks over to the tank and Helen Cho’s creation with hot, ruby eyes and makes a flicking motion with her hands, propelling the spark towards it before collapsing onto her knees.  Sam runs over to her to help her up, but Wanda waves him off.

“Did it work?” she rasps as she sobs for air.  “Is she…”

Over at the tank, Helen’s eyes are glued to her instruments.  

“Watch out,” she shouts. T'Challa and Rhodey are by her side before she finishes speaking, ready to catch and hold the body that had been floating silently inside the tank as it shoots out of the water, sits up and gasps for air.  Helen smiles and nods to herself in a private moment of satisfaction, a smile that widens as first Rhodey and then T'Challa clap her on the shoulder. 

“What the hell?” Natasha’s voice gasps in between deep, wheezing breaths, and it’s the sweetest sound Clint has heard since his children’s first cries. 

There’s momentary chaos as everyone talks and shouts at once, and it’s a good thing that someone had thought about bringing a fluffy bathrobe into the lab.  Clint holds it up and wraps her in it as he lifts her out of the tank. 

Natasha’s own legs don’t quite support her yet and so he sits down on the first available chair.  He pulls her on his lap and cradles her in his arms, starting to rub her dry while muttering a string of words that he realizes are probably utterly inane.   

The mundane, repetitive gesture of his hands against the soft terry cloth keeps him grounded as his mind tries to process one incontrovertible truth: _Natasha is back_.  Every bit of doubt he had had, seeing that floating body in the tank, is gone.  He sees her, feels her, knows her with every fiber of his being. 

For the first time since that day in Iowa when his family had vanished into the wind, through all the years that followed - the rage, the pain, the blood-soaked fury - the hope Natasha had brought before leaving another part of him on the rocks of Vormir, Clint Barton feels whole.

 

*****

 

Finally, the amniotic fluid blinked out of her eyes, Natasha looks around the room and takes in the people surrounding her.  She gasps at what she sees, her eyes filling up again unbidden: 

 _Wanda.  Sam. T'Challa_. _Shuri.  Hope._ Faces and names that had meant nothing but loss for five long years, and an eternity inside the Soul World thereafter.  They’re all _here_ \- some, like Shuri, grinning proudly from ear to ear and others, like Sam, on the verge of tears. 

“Did we win?” she asks, daring to hope.  Her voice is still tentative and raw, as if hasn’t been used in a long time.  “Is everyone…” 

Her friends look at each other in silent consultation, as if to determine how much sorrow a newly-reborn soul can bear.  The flash of joy Natasha started out with turns into dread. Just how much had victory cost them? She starts tallying the Missing.   _Bruce. Tony. Steve.._. 

“Not everyone is back,” Clint says with a catch in his voice, because silence or denial will never be never an option for him. Not with her, and for that Natasha is grateful - even now, even when she doesn’t want to hear the truth.  “Steve isn’t here, but he’s okay. But we… We lost Tony, Tash. He gave his life for all of ours, in the end. Like you did.” 

 _Tony._ Natasha takes a deep breath and tries to imagine a world without Tony Stark’s snark, his heart, his titanic hubris, and his boundless need to make things right.  Did he believe he’d wiped his ledger clean, in the end? 

Clint lifts her off his lap, stands up, and places her back in the chair.  The fact that she’s inclined to let him do that without protest is a sure sign she needs rest. 

“We’ll talk about what happened later.  Let’s get you stabilized and used to breathing air again first. Shuri says there wasn’t any in the Stone, so that must feel new.”  He gives her a soft smile, the kind only very few people ever get to see. “Laura and the kids are keen to see you as soon as you’re ready to travel, so the sooner...” 

He allows his voice to trail off. 

Natasha nods slowly.  It’s clear to her that even that simple gesture takes some effort.  Good news is one thing, shouldering new losses quite another, and Clint is right; even breathing feels new. Time is real again, and there will be many moments to grieve - and to rejoice. 

She examines her hand, pinching two fingers together.   _Still real._   

“My nails haven’t looked this good in years,” she frowns, glancing over at Helen who is still taking measurements, tapping controls, and talking to herself in Korean.  “I don’t want to look right now, but what about…” 

Clint chuckles. 

“The hole Barnes gave you?  And that scar you got in Budapest? You tell her, Helen.”   

Helen turns to Natasha and smiles again.   

“All gone.  No scars, no nothing. You’re as good as new, Miss Romanoff.  I am able to stimulate general muscle growth and strength, but you will need some time to get into shape and to get all your personal movements and reflexes back.”   

In the room, a quietly celebratory mood has taken hold.  Everyone is congratulating and hugging each other in between staring at Natasha as if the sun rises in her eyes, a sentiment she is not at this point able to reciprocate.   

“I’m sure you’ll have lots of volunteers to help out with that,” Helen continues.  “In due course.” 

“She sure will.  You hungry, Nat?”  Sam wants to know. “As far as I know, you haven’t eaten since 2014.” 

It seems an oddly normal thing to ask after the cosmic feat they’ve just pulled off, but nonetheless Natasha checks her familiar-yet-unfamiliar body for signs of hunger or thirst.  Learning or re-learning its signals will take a while, as will getting used to the idea that somehow she isn’t _quite_ the same as she was when she and Clint had landed on Vormir.  

“I assume a glass of pinot is out?” she asks. 

Helen replies using her command voice now, steel wrapped in a single layer of surgical gauze.

“Yes it is.  I think the first thing you need is a good, sound, Earth sleep. You and Miss Maximoff both. Maybe even Agent Barton here.”   

Wanda has already nodded off, still sitting on the floor, her head leaning against the leg of one of Shuri’s instrument tables.  Natasha finds herself nodding in agreement; even that small effort is an exertion. Is this what it feels like to be born? 

But then, through the newness, the relief, the happiness, the sorrow, and the fatigue, she remembers.  Her ledger is clean, and so it will remain.

“There’s something you need to know.  I wasn’t alone.”

 

*****

 

The porch swing still squeaks despite, Clint says, the oil he’s put on it on a dozen different occasions.  The rust must have gotten in deep over the last five years, and as Laura had observed with a sigh, they’ll probably just have to bite the bullet and buy a new chain.   It sounds like a conversation they’ve had before. 

Natasha doesn’t mind the creaking.  She rests her head against Clint’s shoulder, nodding and smiling at Laura waving a bottle of wine at them through the kitchen window.  She comes out, pours them both a glass and sets the bottle down on the windowsill. 

“You guys deserve to celebrate,” she says, before giving Clint a kiss on the head and going back inside to give Nate his bath and put him to bed.  The boards creak under her feet as she goes. Through an open window the bam-bam-bam of some shoot-’em-up video game, Cooper’s dismayed howl, and Lila’s triumphant whoop ring out, while somewhere in the bush a cricket is enthusiastically advertising its readiness for love. 

“You know, that’s one thing that was missing in the Soul World,” Natasha says.  “ _Sound_.  You’d think that would make it more peaceful, but the truth is, it just made it unreal.” 

Clint adjusts his arm around her shoulder and lifts the glass to his lips.  He takes a mouthful and swishes it around with his tongue before swallowing. 

“Shuri says it was pure crystal and energy.  No room for sound waves. Guess that’s why you had to think to communicate?  At least it wasn’t like Scott’s quantum realm, which sounds like a zoo. Those tardigrades he mentioned?” 

“I could have used some tardigrades. Just to stay sharp.”  She stretches out the hand that’s holding her own glass and watches the moonlight imbue the wine with a red glow.  “If Gamora hadn’t come, I might have lost my mind.” 

They sit in silence for a while, Natasha quietly wondering how the Guardians’ quest to retrieve Gamora is going.  Nebula has told them Quill is following a different lead - something about a golden wizard that may make Helen’s help unnecessary - and so Bruce had insisted they take the glove back to where Clint’d be sure to find it in the past.  Nobody had argued the point for very long, not even Natasha.

"I could feel you," she says suddenly, surprising herself.  Maybe it's the wine? "I think. When you held the stone, after I went inside. And later, when you brought it back. _Before_ Wanda helped you reach in.  It was like you were all around me."

He stills for a moment, then pours them both a second glass.  Fourth (fifth?), if you count what they’d already had with dinner.

"I felt you too," he says finally. " On Vormir, after I thought I’d lost you. And when I went back for the glove.  Might have felt you when I picked up the glove at first, but I had a bunch of Chitauri on my ass and was kind of focused on surviving and holding on to the thing so Thanos wouldn’t get it."

She punches him softly to signify her approval of his priorities; he chuckles in response.  New body or not, they still speak the same wordless language.

"So what does that tell us?" she asks after a while.

"About the stone?" Clint hesitates. "We'll, I'm not exactly Shuri. And I'm not a dead floating Nazi mystic, either. So I'd have to go with my gut and say this thing is basically about... mental energy of people? Which is the reason Thanos needed it to wipe everyone out?" 

Natasha turns under his arm and looks at him fondly. She knows a Barton deflection when she sees one and this one's a doozy.  There was a time she would probably have let it slide, but that was before she’d spent six years reduced to her essential self, looking for answers. 

"Not about the stone, you idiot. About us." 

She takes a sip of her wine to give him a moment to digest the fact that she's about to call him out.  The wine's not bad - who knew Ontario could produce a decent pinot?   She’ll have to congratulate Laura on her openness to vinicultural diversity.   

 _Okay, time’s up._  

"You knew when I showed up in Tokyo, too.  Remember? There you were, busy slicing through a squadron of yakuza, and still - you knew _the entire time_ that I was standing there."

Clint lets out a deep breath. 

"Yeah. Yeah, I did."  He rests his chin on her hair.  “ _Do._ I always know when you’re at my six.  Or my twelve. Or whatever number you wanna pick.”

“So do I,” Her throat is suddenly dry.  “Ever since we first met, I guess. Which is why...” 

Her voice drifts off; of course, he’s right there with the follow-through. 

“Why what?” 

“Which is why I’ve been wondering why you didn’t try and find me after… After Thanos.  Why didn’t you come to New York?” 

“Ah, that.”   

His tone has changed and become a touch defensive, but he doesn’t move to break their closeness which Natasha takes as a good sign.   

“I knew you were still alive.  Because I’d know if you weren’t.  But after I lost Laura and the kids…” 

He hesitates for a moment, gets some courage from his glass, and continues with renewed determination.   

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d seen you after.  Maybe I didn’t want to know? ‘Cause it might’ve been too easy to just…” 

Finally, he falters. 

“Move on?” she says gently and he nods, relieved that she’s said it for him. 

But she should have known that he’d turn it around on her. _Did_ know that he would.  Fair is fair. 

“And you.  Why didn’t you just call me?” he asks bluntly.  “I did have my phone, you know. Even kept it charged most of the time.  In case they came back - stupid as that seemed at the time.” 

Ah, yes. The phone for which only she, Laura, and the kids have the number. 

“I…” It’s her turn to hesitate.   

Why _hadn’t_ she called him?  Because she’d been afraid that her partner, her best friend, her soul mate, couldn’t offer her everything she’d lost - or she him?    Well, _in vino veritas_ , they say. The truth it will be.

“I wanted to.  So many times. But I guess it wouldn’t have felt right, not with everyone else still missing.  You’d have had me, but not Laura. I’d have had you, but not… everyone else. We’d have had each other, but our hearts would've still been broken.  And that’s not what I wanted. Not for us.” 

She drains her glass, noticing his is empty as well.  Damn, that wine is good. Also, effective. She reaches for the bottle on the windowsill and divvies up the remainder. 

He waits until she’s settled back into him, tightens his arm around her shoulders again and presses his lips to her hair. 

“Yeah.  But us here, now…  This _does_ feel right.  If that makes sense.”   

Natasha stares at the sky, which has darkened to the point where the first few stars are putting in an appearance, little points of light against the vastness of space.  Funny to think they’ve been up there and come back so changed, yet not. 

The house has gone quiet, with only the occasional fragment of song coming out the window - Laura singing _Shadow’s Lullaby_ for Nate.  “... _and in your dreams if you feel a kiss, that’s just a shadow rustling in the air_...” 

The song lilts to a close on a soft note; for a moment there is complete silence. 

““Nothing you and I do ever makes a lot of sense,” Natasha says, breaking it.  “But it always _feels_ right.” 

“Like Budapest?” he asks, and she can hear the smile in his voice.  He raises his glass.

Natasha chuckles at the memory and lets their glasses clink together.

“ _Exactly_ like Budapest.”

 

 


End file.
